In the Shadow of the Architect

Bradley Bazzle is the author of the novel Trash Mountain and the story collection Fathers of Cambodian Time-Travel Science. His work has appeared in New Letters, New England Review, Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Originally from Dallas, Texas, he lives with his family in Athens, Georgia, where he teaches improvisational comedy.

"Bazzle leads the reader on a treasure hunt of the secret corners, angles, scaffolding, and foundations that make a life a life. These stories reveal the imprints of the past on the present, as Bazzle's always-searching characters excavate memories, longings, regrets, and wonder through the trajectory of their messy and fascinating lives." - Joanna Luloff, author of The Beach at Galle Road: Stories from Sri Lanka"I love these stories, though I have to confess that short fiction is my great love—especially when, like Bradley Bazzle's stories, they are capacious yet stylistically fleet, when they ripple with tension from the first sentence or two, and wherein ghosts and memories and desires flit around like the shadows of birds. If Bazzle were an architect and these stories were buildings, you'd find yourself in one of those dream houses with endless rooms, some revealing glorious surprises, some with doors you wish you hadn't opened, and some, you discover, you hadn't really left." - Reginald McKnight, author of The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas

• In the Shadow of the ArchitectWhere the West BeginsScuttling and CreepingRelatable InfluenceMissingEach Unique SpecimenThe Colleyville House of Gil FontaineAcknowledgments